The Syrian conflict is not yet over: Assad has fallen, but the revolution hasn’t won

First published at Al-Jumhuriya.

Has the Syrian revolution triumphed with the fall of the Assad regime? Is what we have witnessed since last December a successful revolution — albeit after a long, tortuous path?

This question carries cognitive significance, since it demands a detailed understanding of the almost 14 years which passed in Syria between the outbreak of the revolution and the collapse of the regime. It also carries political weight, since the answer will shape how public actors engage with Syria’s present reality and its post-Assad future.

A detailed understanding is unlikely to emerge any time soon: the history of these fourteen years will be written and rewritten for decades. Nevertheless, political discussion is not just possible, it is necessary — to clarify our thinking as we navigate a pivotal moment dissimilar to anything in our generation’s living memory.

For this writer, the question bears some personal charge. I had argued several times that the Syrian revolution failed, and that Syrian democrats should ground their political vision in that sobering reality.

To some, the regime’s fall — and the subsequent outpouring of joy after years of melancholy — seemed to prove me wrong, and some friends have already expressed this view. But I remained unconvinced, even if I lacked, at the time, either the argument or the energy to defend my position.

What follows is a first attempt in that direction.

There are victors!

Perhaps the Assad regime could only have fallen the way it did — at the hands of a coalition of Sunni Islamist forces, ideologically cohesive, battle-hardened, and enabled by a favorable regional and international climate. Yet the convoluted trajectory of the post-revolution years undermines any assumption of even minimal homogenous continuity between March 2011 and December 2024.

What began as a Syrian–Syrian conflict — at first peaceful and then, until mid-2012, a mix of peaceful and armed — later morphed into a Sunni–Shiite confrontation with rising regional stakes, primarily involving Iran and some Gulf states. This phase persisted until the US–Russia chemical weapons deal in September 2013, which marked the beginning of remote internationalization — later followed by direct military interventions: the US in 2014, Russia in 2015, and Turkey in 2016.

As control slipped steadily from Syrian revolutionaries, the revolution was buried beneath a growing mound of non-revolutionary conflicts — sectarian and regional — and was ultimately recast as a “war on terror” that, in effect, rehabilitated Assad’s rule.

The years after 2016 were marked by misery and decomposition — far from revolutionary. They signaled the revolution’s defeat, the domination of sectarian forces within it, the complete collapse of the Free Syrian Army, and the political opposition’s subordination to Turkey.

This period also saw the emergence of a “Sunni entity” in Idlib amid deepening national fragmentation. The dominant forces within this entity were only partly shaped by internal processes of radicalization, militarization, and sectarianization — driven by Sunni communities’ experience of systematic violence, massacres, and the discriminate use of chemical weapons and barrel bombs against them. However, those forces were equally consequences of globalized and unsocial forms of Islamic nihilism that had been taking root in Iraq years before the Syrian revolution.

The faction now in power played no role in the early stages of the Syrian revolution, nor did it emerge from Syrian society. Its transitional president is a former jihadi who operated under multiple aliases in Iraq, where his formative years were spent fighting the Americans and the new Shiite-led government. For years after, this little-known figure led in Syria the Salafi-jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra.

Both he and his group — hostile in word and deed to the revolution, its symbols, and its national formation — were more rooted in a savage, transnational nihilism that rejects both our societies and the wider world than in the dynamics of the Syrian uprising, which began as a popular intifada in the context of the Arab Spring. Rather, he belongs to an elitist, conspiratorial minority, prone to dissidence — one whose ideas and model cannot be a ground for a broad social or political majority, and whose very makeup stands at complete odds with nationalism, democracy, Syria’s history, and even the notion of Syrian society or any form of modern political order.

It is nihilistic for this reason — not simply because it radically rejects the political system, but because it denies the foundations of collective political existence altogether.

Over time, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) distanced itself from the extreme nihilism that ISIS continues to embrace. It gradually adopted the language of the Syrian revolution and stopped rejecting its flag, yet continued to operate from a distinctly Sunni supremacist position.

Alongside HTS, the coalition that toppled the regime — “Operation Deterrence of Aggression” — included rogue, corrupt factions with no public cause and long records of abuse, primarily against Kurds in Afrin but also against the wider population of northern Syria under their control, effectively acting as Turkish proxies.

So, with this in mind: can the fall of the regime still be called a victory for the revolution — rising out of the rubble, like those who emerged from the depths of Sednaya prison and Assad’s security branches?

The collapse sparked widespread and justified joy across Syria, buoyed by the absence of the fear of massacres, reprisals, or destruction. This joy was further fueled by hopes that the regime’s end would bring peace, the lifting of Western sanctions, and the start of economic recovery.

Yet many celebrating do not feel victorious. The fall of the regime is seen less as a win for the 2011 revolution and more as a triumph for the so-called “Sunni entity”.

This group, having endured years of massacres, displacement, and poverty after the revolution, developed a strong narrative of victimhood and a sharp desire for revenge — impulses poorly suited to the post-Assad phase and more likely to fuel discrimination, extremism, and irrationality.

These impulses exploded in genocidal violence on the coast this March, targeting many peaceful Alawites, following a limited revolt by remnants of regime forces.

People may argue, rightly, that the conflict wouldn’t have endured or led to the regime’s fall without being firmly rooted amongst the Sunni community. But that doesn’t erase the conflict’s profound shift toward an exclusionary, sectarian trajectory — now taking shape in political and institutional realities.

… But not the revolution!

I offer these reflections to better frame the central question: Did the 2011 revolution triumph with the fall of the regime in late 2024?

Two ready-made answers dominate. The first — mostly voiced by those within the so-called “Sunni entity” or those who viewed the revolution as a Sunni coup rather than a national liberation movement — insists that, yes, the revolution clearly triumphed.

The second rejects that claim, framing the outcome as an armed Islamist takeover — arguing that Syria is now under extremist rule, deemed terrorist by the UN and major powers. Whether or not it explicitly calls for toppling the new regime, that is where its logic points to.

Those who hold this view may not mourn Assad’s fall (some do), but they are not joyful either. What follows is an attempt to move beyond both responses toward a more nuanced, less polarized understanding of what the fall of Assad truly represents.

To restate: the fall of the Assad regime is a truly monumental event. This is not a matter of personal opinion. It was a regime defined by bloodlines and decay until its final collapse, as evidenced by Sednaya Prison and its vast security apparatus. It ruled too long, shed much blood of its own people, seized their property, entrenched sectarianism, and traded national sovereignty for foreign protection — at the expense of Syria’s land, society, and resources.

In slightly archaic terms, it was a non-national regime — a regime of national betrayal — that had to be overthrown. Whatever comes next does not alter this fact: Syria urgently needed to close that lethal, stagnant chapter of its history — if it was to have any chance at survival.

The scale of the event cannot be overstated. It is a tectonic shift, leaving nothing in society, thought, or collective identity untouched. Alliances and rivalries have been redrawn, new polarizations are emerging, and people are being pulled in all directions before they can even make sense of what’s happening — as if caught in the aftershocks of a massive earthquake.

This comparison to a geological catastrophe is not meant to deny the agency of Syrians. Rather, it tries to convey the sheer force of what has unfolded — and how that force is shaping Syrian agency itself, making it as volatile and unsettled as the moment.

And it puts everybody in a crisis.

No Syrian today — especially those involved in public life — is outside this crisis or unaffected by this immense and unexpected change of our world. The victors included.

We are in an interstitial moment, fertile but disorienting — one that demands reflection, even as it leaves little space for anything else. We inhabit a state of flux, a formless and still-malleable condition whose eventual shape depends, at least in part, on us. This is what it means to be in an in-between state: a time when things, selves, and ideas exist in historical transition — a chaos in which the old world fades daily, while the new one resists taking form. It is also the state of our analysis: in-between, provisional, and largely experimental — struggling for a language and faltering in its struggle, speaking of unformed realities, and risking formlessness itself.

The enormity of the event is one thing; claiming the revolution has triumphed is another. Toppling the regime was a core objective of the Syrian revolution — but as a means to greater ends, not an end in itself.

The revolution aimed to build a new, free Syria — one grounded in equality, dignity, the rule of law, and free of sectarianism and torture. In that sense, no — the revolution has not triumphed. And months after Assad’s fall, there is no sign we are moving toward the goals that once defined it.

The 2011 revolution failed. It collapsed — whether in mid-2012, spring 2013, or, more generously, with the regime and its allies recapturing eastern Aleppo in late 2016. The regime’s fall is of a different order entirely: undeniably monumental, but not the revolution’s victory. The gap between the two is vast — an unbridgeable chasm.

What endured from 2011 to December 2024 was the Syrian conflict — a struggle involving many forces, some Syrian, though most, including the most powerful, were not.

Did this conflict end with the fall of the regime? That was the hope, especially since the regime’s collapse was, to a large extent, a Syrian achievement.

But signs suggest otherwise: the massacres of Alawites, ongoing acts of revenge, security chaos, and the dominant faction’s frantic push to monopolize power all point to a conflict still very much alive.

Another nihilism

In light of the above, the writer finds himself closer to the second, negative answer to the question “Did the revolution triumph?” — though he shares little else with its advocates.

He especially distances himself from the claim — often implied in talk of “terrorists” and “extremists” — that the new ruling order must now be overthrown by any means necessary. This reflects a troubling misuse of terms like “terrorism” and “extremism”, stripped of their moral, legal, and conceptual grounding and reduced to sloganistic labels for specific groups — often deployed in contexts that are themselves extreme, even nihilistic.

Properly defined, “terrorism” is the targeting of civilians to achieve political aims — a definition that places its most frequent users, like the US, Israel, and the defunct Assad regime, among the world’s leading practitioners.

The term is also easily co-opted for sectarian purposes, implicitly applied only to armed Sunni Islamists. “Extremism” functions similarly — no longer describing a rejection of negotiation, compromise, or coexistence, but simply designating certain ideological formations: Islamist, and earlier, Palestinian nationalist ones.

This is not the language of revolution — nor of critical thought or democratic politics. It is stale, elitist, and authoritarian, steeped in discrimination and racism, and lacking any emancipatory potential. Worse, it often appears in rage-filled, hostile rhetoric — verbal and emotional violence aimed not just at political movements or ideologies, but at entire communities.

Those who speak this way are not calling for a revolution, nor working toward one, nor renewing a democratic struggle in a changed context.

To the extent there is discernible politics here, it relies on the explosive potential of inherited divisions and hopes for international backing to bring down the current order.

There is something deeply nihilistic in this — strikingly similar to the early Islamic nihilism that emerged in Syria in 2012: a furious rejection of reality, indifferent to consequences, and driven by a hostility to society itself — much like the jihadist disdain for the very humanity of our contemporary society.

A politics rooted in this dual hostility is, by nature, extremist. It rejects politics, negotiation, and compromises — making it impossible to build any meaningful social or political majority around it.

Anti-extremism, pro-politics

Syria needs a calm transitional phase — free of violence, provocations, and imposed agendas. It must be a time to catch breath, restore services, lift sanctions, enable large-scale returns of the displaced, and advance efforts to uncover the fate of the disappeared.

This transition also requires political arrangements for regions with unique circumstances, where Damascus offers meaningful concessions — supporting forms of local governance or “self-administration” that preserve national unity and reduce foreign interference.

Concessions to Syria’s local and ethnic constituencies — Druze, Kurds, Alawites — are far preferable to a politics of force, which would ultimately rely on regional or international powers for support.

Pacification is the right approach today, both internally and externally. It offers the best conditions for Syrian society to move toward moderation, and for public actors to regroup and reorient. The politics of force that devastated Syria under Assad will not serve it now.

Some may ask: Why delay? Why not confront the new rulers, as we did the old? The answer lies in both prudence and realism. There is little social support for such politics — not even among the communities some rely on. Neither the Kurds in the Jazira, nor the Druze in Suwayda, nor even the Alawites — despite the massacres — are seeking revolution or armed revolt today.

Instead, the widespread demand is for a more pluralistic, representative, and decentralized system — one that is truly just and emancipatory — and pursued, for now, through political means.

Could that change? Could a revolutionary coalition emerge from non-Arab Sunni groups and some non-conservative Sunni Arabs? Only if the current ruling power veers toward extremism — that is, if it rejects political solutions — could such a trajectory begin to take shape. Or to put it mathematically: the extremism of the rulers, multiplied by the duration of their extremist policies, may eventually equal a new revolutionary coalition.

But such a coalition must be seen as a counter-force to extremism: one that builds a shared public cause, wins the battle for hegemony, and steers toward moderation and inclusion — unlike the exclusionary, frenzied rhetoric so common these days among detractors of the current administration.

In fact, we are witnessing two types of extremist tendencies within the current governing structure. First, there are the Salafi or jihadist extremist impulses, or both — these attract media attention and generate social fear, but they are not the most dangerous. Second, there are centralist extremist tendencies, embodied in the constitutional declaration and the formation of the government, seemingly driven by a desire to concentrate power in the hands of a narrow group at the top. These centralist tendencies are less dramatic than the scattered extremism of Salafis and jihadists, but more dangerous in the long run.

Instead of solving a problem, a new one has been created: the institutional stability that the constitutional declaration and the government formation seek to guarantee is not viable under the country’s social and geographic fragmentation. Efforts toward institutional stability should have followed the resolution of these social and geographic issues — not preceded them.

By handling it the way they did, Ahmed al-Sharaa and his team put the cart before the horse. They tailored a tight-fitting suit for Syria that entices no one to wear it — in fact, the right thing to do is to reject it.

No one knows how this problem will be resolved. On one hand, it’s inconceivable that Druze or Kurds will accept the current institutional framework. On the other, a solution imposed by force seems impossible (and of course, undesirable.)

The most appropriate path today is to initiate a serious negotiated restructuring of the current state, especially of the constitutional declaration, the government, and the military formation processes — in a way that overcomes current divisions, breaks with the suffocating centralism that has plagued Syria’s history, and responds flexibly to the actual pluralism of Syrian society.

This means taking two or three steps back, to a point before last March, in order to move more firmly forward. The best approach is for political solutions to precede the formation of public institutions, not the reverse.

Politics means negotiation, it means compromise and mutual concessions, middle-ground solutions, and institutions built to uphold the emerging consensus.

But if the door of politics is shut, then the door of revolution will open — even if only after some time. And no one should delude themselves into thinking this rule applies to others but not to themselves.